got me feeling sub kind of way
by arahir
Summary: Shiro was a lawyer. Keith was a sandwich. (Can I make it any more obvious?) / "I'm—I'm a sandwich." Hunk puts his hands on Keith's shoulders, or tries. "Don't say that man. You're more than that."
1. Chapter 1

"I'm—I'm a sandwich."

Hunk puts his hands on Keith's shoulders, or tries. It's hard through the layers of painted foam and velour. The costume is a little stained, a little sun bleached, and smells vaguely of every person who's ever been forced to go through the same trial Keith is now facing.

"Don't say that man. You're more than that."

Keith tries to give him his best deadpan stare, raising his arms to the side to say, _I am. I am a sandwich. I'm literally a sandwich._

But Hunk shakes his head. "No. It's what's in _here_ that counts." He presses the palm of his hand to Keith's chest—to the middle of the sesame bun painted foam covering his chest.

"Tomato?" Keith asks. "Cheese?"

"I mean ideally, some lettuce and meat, but— No. No, what? Your heart. He's not going to judge you for being a part-time sandwich—"

Keith raises an eyebrow.

"—ok, well, if he does, that's on him," Hunk concedes. There are fundamental truths in the universe like gravity and time and the fact that men who wear Armani don't look at—let alone date—sandwich boys. No matter what else Keith is, he works part-time dressed in a sandwich costume, foisting unwanted flyers on unsuspecting passersby.

There's no coming back from that.

* * *

Keith remembers the morning it started, because it was beautiful.

It was spring, and the weather was nice—one of those post-storm sunrises with puddles still glittering on the sidewalk, buds starting to open on the ornamental cherries someone thought would look good lining the streets. He took the job because he wasn't doing anything else from nine to twelve and the gig was near his regular work. Why not make some extra money?

It was Keith's third day. The man walked by at 9:10am, coffee in hand, wearing a suit Keith later identifies as Canali after several embarrassing evenings spent poring over men's clothing magazines in his boxers and t-shirt, trying to convince himself it was a natural amount of curiosity and not anything deeper.

He walks by with the grace and presence of someone who knows their own body and worth, and then when he's within a few feet, he glances at Keith and _smiles_. And not the awkward don't-look-directly-at-the-sandwich-boy look Keith is getting used to. It's warm—a little amused, but like Keith is in on the joke, and bam. He doesn't know it for a week, but that's the moment Keith's life ends.

The man is beautiful, and that might be excusable if he wasn't also the kindest man alive.

Two weeks in, Keith sees him stop to help a woman who dropped a stack of papers. It takes minutes, and Keith spends every moment of it watching the man bend and grab papers—and he's not the only one. Keith shoots a glare at the papers' owner. She could at least help instead of ogling him. Keith would, but the sandwich isn't made for flexibility and if he breaks it he buys it. When the stack is collected, the man brushes the dirt off the papers on his own pants and hands them to the woman with a little bow and an apology, as if he had a thing to do with it.

That's the start. It turns out to be a theme.

Three days later a man runs into him with a coffee. "Oh," Suit man laughs, "I needed to get it dry-cleaned anyway." He waves a hand and right there—right there on the sidewalk—unbuttons the suit jacket, pulls it off, and flips it over one shoulder to carry like he's on the runway.

A week after that he rescues a child's toy from the street. He puts out a hand to stop traffic first, and Keith is seconds from leaping in there to grab him, sandwich be damned, but the cars part for him like the sea parting for a patron god.

No one honks.

He gives a homeless man his coffee unprompted, and what looks like a twenty, with a quiet apology he doesn't carry more cash. He stops to pet dogs and smile at strangers and once, once he stops right next to Keith to watch the sky.

* * *

"Nice day," the man says.

For a second Keith thinks he's talking to someone else, but they're in the post-morning rush lull and the sidewalk is quiet.

"Yeah," Keith says, trying to inject some joy in it rather than the near-fatal shock that's coursing through his veins. At least he's not blushing—but only because he's too scared. The bloodless terror that he'll mess up wars with the instinctive need to go as red as the tomato he can see at the corner of his eye, and Keith hopes it cancels out to an almost-normal skin color.

 _You're a sandwich,_ his logic brain reminds him delicately.

"Yeah," the man agrees, nodding. "It is nice."

He turns to Keith, smiling a little too brightly. There's some color in his cheeks—it's a cool morning—and Keith had been distantly hoping the man would be ugly up close. He's not. The scar across his face, the white in his hair—it's all perfection.

Later Keith will recognize that as the moment his situation slipped from mildly embarrassing to life-ruining.

The man holds out his hand. "I'm Shiro," he offers and smiles.

Keith makes himself take his hand, basic muscle memory taking over where the rest of his brain has seized up in complete panic mode, and god, he's warm even through the fingerless gloves. "Keith," he manages, and then to his everlasting regret, his muscle memory chooses that moment to fail him.

"Would you like a flyer...?"

* * *

Hunk knows about Shiro because Hunk works at Kolivan's along with Keith, and he's the only one there doesn't think his part-time gig as a sandwich isn't the funniest thing to ever happen to the garage. Antok snaps a picture of Keith on his first day and prints it out to hang on the fridge in the lounge. _Look, it's my wallpaper_ , he tells Keith later, showing him his lock screen. (As far as Keith knows, he hasn't changed it.)

Kolivan is kinder about it. He pulls Keith aside to ask if he needs more hours, but Keith doesn't know how to tell him that he's only doing it for his daily thirty-second fix of Suit Man.

Shiro. His name is Shiro.

Hunk is the only one Keith trusts with that. Hunk is understanding.

"I mean, you could see him in other ways. You could… not wear the sandwich and still be out there. It's a public sidewalk," he says from under the car they're working on, a month in. "How did you get his name again?"

Keith wipes his forehead, trying to physically wipe the memory out of his failure out of his mind. "He wanted a flyer."

"He told you his name because he wanted flyer?" Hunk rolls out from under the car to give Keith a dubious look.

There's no answer the rest of the garage won't mock, and Keith doesn't miss the way they've all gone quiet. He's not giving them more ammo.

Hunk glances around, realizing. His voice drops. "Look… What do you have to lose?"

Keith can't explain that he's fine with the current situation. He wants to watch this man walk by in the morning, to know there's one perfect person out there in the world, and that he deigns to let Keith look upon his majesty. Since their introduction, Shiro's added a little wave to his morning smile. Sometimes he says Keith's name, softly.

 _Have a good day, Keith. Nice weather, Keith. Don't work too hard, Keith._

It can't get better, and it can't get worse.

* * *

It gets worse.

The job was only supposed to go for two weeks, a month tops, but when the shop offers to keep him on through summer, Keith can't think of a compelling reason to say no. None more compelling than Shiro's smile. The downside is that it gets hot. The ornamental cherries aren't so nice in summer; there's a halo of smashed fruit cooked onto the sidewalk around each one. Keith gets used to avoiding stepping on them and ignoring the faint, omnipresent smell. It's thankless work, but he's good at compartmentalizing and he has high motivations.

And then, on an unassuming Tuesday in mid-June, Shiro walks by—and he's not alone.

The woman with him is the second most beautiful person Keith has ever seen. Her blonde hair is almost platinum white, half done up in braids, half stretching down her back in waves. The two of them together are lethal, illegal—traffic is visibly slowing to watch them go by and Keith can't even pretend not to stare.

Past the shock rolling through him, past the crushing disappointment, it makes sense. Of course, Shiro would have someone, and—well. Keith is a sandwich.

As they walk by, Shiro does his usual wave and smile. The woman glances at Keith and does a quick double-take, eyes skating up and down Keith's body—and then they're past him and off down the street.

Keith sees her lean in, put a delicate hand on Shiro's shoulder, whispering something in his ear that has Shiro going tense, and then they're obscured by the crowd, and Keith's life is over.

For the next ten minutes he stands there, frozen, the scene replaying in his mind. A girlfriend. Shiro has a girlfriend. He's an idiot.

* * *

Keith begs off work early and heads to the shop to take out his anguish on an engine. The rest of the garage seems to get the vibe that he doesn't want to be talked to when he asks for the worst job in the shop and Kolivan points him in the direction of an engine that he shudders and says was "smoking" when they brought it in and lets Keith loose.

The job takes all day, and most of the night, until it's well past close and Hunk is the only one left there—mostly out of sympathy, Keith thinks. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks in the quiet of the shop.

Keith doesn't insult him by pretending they don't both know what this is about. "No."

Hunk lets it lie, but a half-hour later he comes back from the kitchen with a beer and wet towel and Keith owes him something for that.

"He has a girlfriend." There's no question who he means. The sound Hunk makes is the same one Keith's heart made when he saw the woman on Shiro's arm. _Heart,_ Keith thinks to himself. _Don't be dramatic._ "They—they weren't kissing. But she was beautiful."

Hunk glances at him and gives him a quick once-over with a little, "Hmm." Keith knows how he looks after a day in the shop: boilersuit half-unbuttoned and tied around his waist, hair back, tank top and skin smeared with engine grease. It's not better than the sandwich by much. Hunk makes the same sound again, more considering.

"I'm going to quit tomorrow," Keith tells him. It's time. He'll get over it, and it may be his worst crush, but it's not his first.

...Ok, it may be his first, also, but he'll get over that, too.

"Maybe I'll stop by and grab lunch for everyone. See you off."

This is Hunk, trying to cheer him up. "I've got discount coupons," Keith tells him, and tries to make it humorous more than defeated.

* * *

True to his word, Hunk is there, and he comes armed with a pep talk Keith wants no part of.

"I'm a sandwich," Keith repeats, trying to explain why this isn't going to work. The statement gets him a couple stares, but he's used to it.

"No. You're _dressed_ as a sandwich." Hunk removes his hand from Keith's chest and changes tactics. "I don't know if you realize this, but you've talked about him a lot."

Keith rolls his eyes.

"A lot. Like, a _lot_. You've talked about him so much. You've talked about him for months." Hunk shakes his head, eyes boring a hole into the middle distance, hands on his head. "Just so much. You've talked about him _so m_ —"

"I get it." Keith's blushing, part embarrassment, part heat. It's already warm out and they're predicting it to be a record day. He already handed in his resignation—or, mentioned it in passing at the sandwich shop as he walked out, which is really all they needed. He'll be out before it hits the hundreds and then he can move on with his life and forget he ever spent two months cosplaying lunch food so he could lay eyes upon the most beautiful man alive.

Hunk takes a deep breath. "Ok. Look. I didn't want to do this, but—the guys told me to tell you that you can't come back until you talk to this guy."

Keith rolls his eyes. "Oh, come—"

"No. _No_ , Keith. Tell him." Hunk punctuates it with a glare. He starts walking, backward, maintaining eye-contact with Keith. "Tell him," he repeats, and again: "You better tell him." He's almost to the street. "Keith, _tell him._ "

Keith doesn't flip him off, but only because it'll reflect badly on the sandwich shop if someone sees.

 _Tell him._ If that's what they want, fine. It'll go exactly how he thinks it will, and he'll be right, and that's it. He settles in to wait it out.

But Shiro doesn't show up at the usual time.

By ten, it's too hot for comfort. By eleven, Keith has sweated through his shirt and is starting to regret not quitting outright. A few people walking by give him concerned looks, but the part of him that's mourning his lost crush and dignity doesn't mind the suffering. Of course, it would be the hottest day of the season. Of course, Shiro has a girlfriend. Of course, he's dressed as a sandwich, standing on a street corner. A sweaty sandwich. That's all he is.

Shiro shows up exactly ten minutes before noon.

Keith knows because there's a clock in the window of the clothing shop across the street and he's whiling away the last few minutes watching time tick down, not sure if he's disappointed or relieved that this is the first day he's missed Shiro. It makes a cosmic sort of sense. He's almost convinced himself of that by the time Shiro appears.

"You're still here."

His voice is wondrous.

He's hard to see in the sun—but everything is hard to see. Peripheral vision isn't stellar in a sandwich outfit in best conditions, but his hair and sweat keep obscuring his eyes. He's a mess. Of course, Shiro would see him, on today of all days.

And Keith realizes, he has no idea how to respond. "Yeah?"

Shiro steps closer, eyes wide. "The shop told me you'd quit. It's so hot, i didn't think you'd be out here, so I went here..." He trails off. It's more than Keith's ever heard him speak at once, and Shiro must realize it too, because he looks a bit chagrined.

Keith shrugs; the sandwich tilts a little with the motion and not much else. "It's not that hot."

It is. It's sweltering. Keith feels—not great. At all.

"It is. It's a hundred and three. Keith, what you doing out here?"

 _Tell him_ , Hunk says in his mind. A kind of delirious courage wells up in him. Shiro is the most beautiful man alive, and Keith isn't too proud to admit it. No one would be ashamed to say so—but most people don't dress up as a sandwich to pine their love away, either.

"I quit," Keith tells him, and winces. Shiro already knows that. "I have to tell you something." Keith scuffs his boot on the sidewalk, staring down at the sesame bun covering his legs. "But you have a girlfriend, and I'm a sandwich, and—"

"I don't have a girlfriend." Shiro takes another step toward him, eyes riveted to Keith's face in what's either concern or wonder. "And you're not a sandwich. You're a mechanic at Kolivan's, right?"

Keith nods, not able to connect the dots, feeling a blush rise in his cheeks.

Shiro smiles at him, eyes bright. "I knew it. I used to take my car there."

There's no Earthly reason why Shiro would remember him from there, but it's something. Shiro doesn't have a girlfriend, and he walked here to see Keith, and he knows Keith isn't a full-time sandwich. It's worth a shot.

"I like you," Keith hears himself blurt out. The second it's out his mouth, a weight lifts from his shoulders. For months it's been weighing on him; it almost feels like his body is physically rising. He lays that truth on the ground between them and then raises his hands to the side. _I'm just a sandwich, standing in front of a man._

"But… you never talk to me. You—you gave me a flyer when I introduced myself." Shiro has started to color around his ears from the heat "I was going to ask you out, if you want to sometime."

The blush on Keith's face is already permanent. It's never going away. Keith's life is falling apart around him. It's not just his face—his whole body feels hot. He opens his mouth to say something, explain his own stupidity, but words won't come out.

"Keith—" Shiro's voice comes to him down a tunnel, and his hearing blinks out for a moment. "Keith? Can I get you some water?" Shiro glances around, like maybe there will be a child on the corner selling lemonade or some magical water fountain—

Keith is—Keith is not good, he realizes distantly. Shiro steps closer, until he's only a foot away and Keith feels Shiro's leg brush the outer edge of the lettuce on his thigh as he lays a hand against Keith's forehead.

Shiro's eyes are big and kind and Keith wants to touch his eyebrows.

"You—what? _Keith?_ "

That's the last thing he sees: the man's perfect eyebrows, rising in shock, and nothing.

* * *

"I've got him. Here—"

Keith feels something cool nudge his lips, and then realizes it's cool water and comes alive. "Slow," the voice chides gently, and the hand he didn't realize was buried in his hair tugs him back. "Just take it easy."

Shiro, he realizes when he blinks the sweat and fatigue out of his eyes. The man looks like an angel, limned in sunlight, dark eyes full of concern and—and Keith is lying on the sidewalk. Beyond Shiro there's a crowd gathered, faces pressing in. At least one person has their phone out, though Keith can't imagine why.

"Should we call an ambulance?" someone asks.

 _Ambulance._

"What the fuck," Keith says, trying to raise his arms. His shirt is gone, and more pressingly, so is the sandwich. No, not gone—it's in shreds of lettuce and tomato colored foam, he realizes, glancing around him.

Shiro strokes the back of his neck, calming. "Sorry, sorry—I couldn't find the zipper." There's an extra step there between not finding the zipper and cutting the thing apart, but after living in it for a few months, Keith can't really mourn its loss.

"My shirt?" Keith mumbles. He can only process one piece of this at a time and Shiro's hands on his naked skin are at least ten of them.

The guilty look on Shiro's face says it went the same way as the sandwich. Instead of answering, Shiro presses the bottle back to his lips and tilts it again. Keith drinks obediently, trying to clear his mind enough to remember how he ended up there.

When it's empty, Shiro sets the bottle aside and runs his fingers over Keith's face. They're cool by comparison, gentle but firm. "Can you stand? I want to get you out of the sun."

Keith nods, tries, and regrets it when he goes pitching forward, but Shiro steadies him. "What happened?" Keith asks.

"You asked me out and fainted," Shiro tells him, walking Keith to the nearest patch of what passes for shade at midday.

"I asked you out?" That doesn't sound like something Keith could manage to do in a sandwich costume, but his memory is still fuzzy.

"Close enough." Shiro says, kneeling in front of him, brushing the hair back from his forehead.

He lost his suit jacket at some point, and his tie. It shouldn't be possible that he looks more beautiful, but he does.

"Did you say yes?" Keith asks.

Shiro ducks his head, and when he looks up again he's grinning. "Of course I did."

Keith stares at him, trying to make the words click together in his mind. It's like a double positive or something, and Keith suddenly isn't sure that they don't work the same way a double negative does. "Why?"

"Because I like you." Before Keith can argue, Shiro leans forward and brushes a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Keith is totally unprepared for it and wants to object on principle because he looks disgusting and smells disgusting and he's half naked sitting under a cherry tree on the stinking sidewalk, but then Shiro pulls back and he looks exactly how Keith feels: a little scared, but like he wants to pull Keith to the nearest quiet, private place and repeat the move when he has time to follow it through.

That only leaves one question. "But _why?_ "

Shiro hunches over, shoulders shaking a little. "Keith. Keith, you have to know."

He's laughing and it figures that he'd have a bad sense of humor. One flaw Keith can overlook. Keith's head is starting clear up, his memory is starting to come back, and the sound of Shiro's quiet little guffaws is the sweetest thing he's heard in weeks or months—maybe years.

"Keith. You look like a snack."


	2. Chapter 2

The mechanic bends further over the engine. It's a two-way mirror and they didn't give him an ETA on the job being done, but if this is Shiro's view, he can wait.

As he watches, the mechanic stands back up, stretches, and then unzips the coveralls. Shiro feels his breath catch. He puts down the magazine and all pretense as the man pulls his arms out and reties the sleeves around his waist, back flexing under his tight black tank top in a way that's going to haunt Shiro—and he hasn't even seen the man's face.

He thinks it, and like a creature summoned, the man turns.

Shiro registers black hair and piercing blue eyes, pale skin and fine angles—just a glimpse, but enough to haunt him—before the door beside him slams open.

"That's two hundred. I had the boys check things over. Should be done by tomorrow. Do you have a ride?"

Shiro darts his gaze up to the old mechanic and tries not to look guilty. There's nothing to look guilty for. He was watching his car, observing, making sure nothing was amiss—as if he knows enough about the inner workings of a car to be able to tell. The mechanic raises an eyebrow, looks out the window and then back to Shiro. He knows.

"Two fifty, actually," he says, mouth twisting. He doesn't give an explanation. Shiro doesn't ask for one.

He makes the check out for $290 and hopes some of it finds its way to the blue-eyed mechanic.

* * *

He's late getting back to the office.

"You need to get rid of that thing," Allura tells him when he walks in. She sets the file down on his desk with a kind of vengeance, like she finds Shiro's entire presence repulsive on principle. The sins of the car are the sins of the man, but can he really be blamed. The XJR is a classic.

"It's a—"

"Classic. I know," she tosses over her shoulder, already gone. She always gets the last word. It's been this way since college—but not today.

"It's a nice car!" Shiro yells after her.

"You're gonna die!" he hears after a moment from around the corner before there's the audible sound of her office door slamming.

That turns out to be more prophetic than Shiro would like to admit. The car doesn't kill him, or try, but it starts committing a kind of slow suicide that's tragic to watch—and more tragic to pay for, even on a partner's salary.

"The check engine light is on," Shiro tells Kolivan, gesturing to the dash, and then winces—as if Kolivan has never seen a check engine light in his life.

Kolivan gives him a pitying look from the driver's seat. "There are several lights on."

He's not wrong.

He doesn't wait for Shiro to speak. "Can I be honest with you?" he asks, staring down at the sheet in his hand. It appears to be a checklist that someone has helpfully scribbled over entire portions of in red ink. According to Kolivan, the mere fact he was able to drive it to the garage is a miracle. "You should consider buying a new vehicle." He manages to sound both concerned and disinterested.

Shiro feels like a wife getting bad news about her husband's health. He folds his arms, looks down, tries to think of an answer that's in the ballpark of reasonable. "Isn't there anything you can do?"

Kolivan raises an eyebrow. "Yes. Of course. It's just expensive."

"Money's no issue," Shiro says.

Kolivan's other eyebrow rises. "No?"

"No..." Movement beyond the car catches Shiro's eye. It's him. The one with the eyes and hair and—the everything, coming in for work, dressed down in dark jeans and a leather jacket. A single beam of morning sun stretches down from the skylight in the garage and falls on him for an instant as he walks past the car. He's staring down at his phone. "No issue," Shiro hears himself say.

Kolivan follows his gaze.

"...Interesting."

* * *

Two thousand dollars later, Shiro has a few regrets. Regrets, and a car that refuses to work beyond the vaguest sense of the word. Kolivan is in the reception when he walks into the garage and the look on his face when he sees Shiro makes him feel like he's forgotten an essential article of clothing, or maybe like he should apologize for his existence.

"It's—it's just kind of choosing random gears," Shiro opens with, unsure how else to describe the fact that the car might be haunted. He stops a few feet away from the counter.

Kolivan looks back to the newspaper in his hand—it looks like a crossword at distance, but he's not holding a pen and it's not filled in. Maybe he's doing it in his head.

Shiro lowers his voice and leans into confiding distance, but not so close Kolivan will be able to reach across the counter and grab him. It's a nebulous, unfounded—he hopes—fear. "I think it wants to kill me."

He puts the paper down finally, but he still doesn't look at Shiro. "It's not trying to kill you. I'll have—the boys take a look." He glances at the window. Blue-eyes is there. Shiro knew he was there because he drove by the garage first to check if it was busy. Just to see. Just in case.

The door slams open. Shiro jumps.

"I saw that Jag in the—" The man stops short when he steps through the door and sees Shiro, and then a smile breaks across his face that's almost cat-like. He's huge. He's bigger than Shiro and bigger than Kolivan and a face Shiro feels like he'll forget as soon as he looks away but will haunt him all the same.

Some unspoken conversation goes back and forth between him and Kolivan and then the man offers his hand to Shiro. "We'll take care of it, sir."

"We'll try," Kolivan amends, and Shiro appreciates the honesty

"If Keith can't save it, no one can," the man says.

Keith. _Keith._ It's like the sun rising on his dark world.

Kolivan closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, but Shiro only registers it at the edge of his mind because the rest of it is staking out land for the name Keith, rewriting a month's worth of vague fantasies. He has to play it cool. He has to be calm, collected, reasonable.

"Oh, Keith. Right. Is that—" Shiro darts his eyes to the window, and back to the man, and back to the window because _holy fucking hell_.

Keith is on break. He's leaned against the Jaguar, hip cocked to one side. As Shiro watches, he reaches under his tank top and pulls it up to wipe the sweat and engine grease off his face. He has abs. He has— _many_ abs. Shiro knew, distantly. Some things just are. Also, he could see the line of them through the tank top, but admitting he looked that close from that far away is a sacrifice of personal respect he's not willing to make yet.

That vow lasts seconds.

Keith lets his hand fall. The top gets caught up around his belly button, but he doesn't bother to pull it down. He combs his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face, and then holds a hand out to the other mechanic. The man tosses him a bottle of water.

There's no need for him to drink it the way he does. No need. The long column of his throat, the stray trickle of water out of the corner of his mouth... Shiro tries to steady himself on the counter without being obvious about it as Keith steps away from the car, raises the bottle over his head and _pours—_

"Jesus christ," Kolivan mutters.

"I've talked to him about this," the big man sighs.

* * *

If there's one moment that does it, one moment he can pick out later that marks his full descent, it's this:

He walks to work because it's a beautiful morning—and because the car is in the shop, again. Still. Always. In a way it's a deal, because he doesn't have to pay for parking as long the car is at Kolivan's. He has his coffee and one perfect set of abs to contemplate on his walk and there's not a thing in the world wrong.

It's early. The streets aren't busy and—it makes the sandwich hard to avoid.

Shiro doesn't mean to make eye contact as he walks by, but he readies his best _I'm not looking but I'm also not judging and I'm supportive of you as a person_ smile as he moves past. It's a hideous costume by any definition. It looks like someone tried to repaint it at some point and failed miserably. You can't sew latex and foam, but someone did their tragic best. He almost wants to ask if the person lost a bet or needs some money, but then he gets close enough to see who's inside and his life falls to pieces right there on the sidewalk.

He's only seen Keith's eyes at a distance. Up close, they're shattering. It's a color Shiro's never seen before, or something about the light—he's inhuman in beauty.

And he's wearing a sandwich costume.

If he recognizes Shiro, he doesn't show it. They've never talked before, there's no reason he would. The look on his perfect, beautiful face is indescribable and Shiro feels like he's the one dressed as food. He doesn't have time to stare, but the rest of his walk is a haze.

That's how it begins. The long, slow slide into indignity. To be fair, Shiro brings most of it on himself.

He starts walking the same route to work. It's a half hour out of his way, but worth it. Sometimes he manages a little hello or half a wave. A glimpse, a smile, a hello. No matter what he does, Keith doesn't say anything, and Keith doesn't give him a flyer, but it's enough. For weeks, it's enough. He fantasizes about how he'd introduce himself. Allura catches him muttering his name to himself once at his desk, but it's not a big deal.

His break comes two weeks later. A harried-looking woman loses an entire pile of papers on the corner where Keith's standing vigil and there's no way they aren't a loss, but Shiro sees his chance and takes it. He stops and smiles and says in what he hopes is a serene voice, "Can I help you?"

As he starts grabbing papers, he can feel eyes on him—he sends a quick prayer of thanks up to the heavens for Coran and Coran's encyclopedic knowledge of up-brand suits and sizing and bends further. It ends up taking minutes longer than it should because it's hard to individually walk to each paper, bend, and grab, but his primal instincts and the memorized curve of the mechanic's butt through a seductive layer of coveralls won't let him get down on his knees and do it right.

That brief high comes crashing down when he turns and sees the guy isn't the one staring at him. No, the guy is staring at the woman who's staring at Shiro, and that's life. That's typical. A thirteen hundred dollar suit and he can't catch the eye of a man dressed as a sandwich.

It gets worse.

Shiro is, by law, not allowed to buy himself clothes. Their practice has an image to maintain, Allura informs him delicately after they get a real office, and shoves him in Coran's direction. Shiro can fill a suit but he can't pick one out so there's not much emotional attachment to lament when it gets soaked in what smells like it might be a caramel macchiato.

The only thing to lament is that Keith sees everything.

It's not Shiro's fault. He turns the corner, sees Keith, and more—he sees Keith's smile. It's a first. He has a moment whre it feels like he's floating. Keith is smiling at nothing in particular and it ruins Shiro in a deeply personal way. It ruins him, right into the path of oncoming traffic. The coffee goes flying in a low arc that Shiro can track but can't run from, and then it's over. It's all over.

No one speaks for seconds. The man is middle-aged and he looks like he's sadder about the loss of coffee than the hit to Shiro's suit and dignity. "Oh," Shiro tries to brush it off, in a desperate parody of chill. "I needed to get it dry-cleaned anyway." He winces. There's no such thing as dry cleaning a suit like this. It's dead.

Keith watches the scene in condemning silence. The stare of a man dressed as food shouldn't have that much weight, but his does. Shiro has to do something.

 _Don't try,_ Allura told him once, with the compassion of a friend. _You always ruin it._

He tries.

Keith's eyes are glued to him. He can't not try. He whips off his jacket with an apology and then he tries to decide in that millisecond how he can possibly carry it. Over an arm seems—plebeian, which he absolutely is, but would really like, just this once, to not be. The only other feasible way is the same one he's memorized from there fashion magazines Allura used too shove at him before she realized it was a lost cause. It's the least lame way he can imagine, and somehow, in cruel paradox, the _most_ lame way. Keith's gaze doesn't waver or change.

Shiro doesn't realize the full breadth of how ridiculous he looks until a block away when he notices he's gathering stares and catches a glimpse of himself in a shop window. It's unfortunate, but there's no salvaging it. Not the suit, not his self-respect. When he gets to the office, Coran takes one look at the jacket and wilts like he's a dowager and Shiro is his philandering daughter come home after a night on the town. It's Shiro's money wasted, not his, but he still feels that pang of guilt.

After that, it's like god is mocking him. Walking by Keith is an act of masochistic devotion and he does it every day. There's an aura around Keith that makes Shiro's brain go on strike and do incredible things in pursuit of something he hasn't put his finger on yet but involves in nebulous fashion the fall of Keith's hair against his neck and the way his eyes look in the sun, and maybe also his sweaty abs after he's spent an hour wrestling with Shiro's car at the garage.

He gives his coffee to strangers. He jumps into oncoming traffic to save a stuffed bunny that a child throws from a stroller. When the garage miraculously resurrects his ruined car, he starts bringing it in for rattles and minor annoyances that has Kolivan looking at him like he's something too pitiable and hideous to actually be dangerous.

Keith never talks to him—not even to give him a flyer, which hurts less for the denial of a discount sub than the fact that after a few months of hopeless crushing, he still hasn't heard Keith's voice.

He loses time at his desk trying to put a voice to that face. Maybe deep, or soft, or—briefly, he imagines—like some action hero in a movie. An imagine spot with Keith as the gruff hero of Shiro's own personal action film steals most of his lunch hour. _A sandwich by day… Mechanic by afternoon… Sometimes you have to crack a few bad eggs to make an egg sandwich..._

It's too far. That's what it is, he realizes. He has to do something.

* * *

He practices in front of the mirror for ten minutes before he leaves his apartment. The effort is mostly unintentional. He accidentally mutters something pathetic out loud while he's shaving and once he starts he can't stop, until he's scrutinizing every line of his smile like a middle-schooler on photo day. He dresses like he means it, but for the first time his hair looks as ridiculous as Allura and Coran have been trying to imply it is for years.

 _Nice day,_ he says to himself. _It's a nice day. This is a lovely day we're having._ No, best to keep it short and casual. Less chance for him to stumble over his own tongue. By the time he gets to Keith's corner, he's sure it's going to take a minor act of god to get him to actually make the words out, but he's in luck—Keith isn't in his usual spot.

The sandwich is faced away, toward the street and the sun. There's something poetic about the fall of his shadow. Something almost romantic.

"Nice day." Good. Casual. Once the words are out, he's not sure why he dreaded them so much.

Keith turns, shuffling his body around until their eyes meet past the lettuce and ham, and then he shuffles a few steps further, glancing around like he thinks Shiro is talking to someone else. "Yeah?"

 _Yeah._

His voice is like coffee. It's warm, a little rough, a little sweet.

"Yeah," Shiro hears himself repeat the word—his favorite word, now—and then he has to find something to follow it with. "It is nice."

Suave. Repeating himself is a great place to start. He feels a blush rise in his cheeks, but he has nothing left to lose—his dignity left him several weeks back when he poured water down his shirt in the garage waiting room and it hasn't written home since. "I'm Shiro," he says, offering a hand. For a moment he's horrified he misspoke his own name, but then there's a hand in his, as warm and rough as it's owner's voice.

"Keith." Keith glances around again and holds up the stack of orange papers in his other hand. "Would you like a flyer?"

Shiro claims it like a champion's prize.

* * *

"Can you explain why you're an hour late?"

Shiro swallows his bite in a way he knows looks guilty, but he has nothing to be ashamed of. "I stopped to get lunch."

It's ten in the morning.

Allura squints at him like she's going to argue, but then friends. "Why do you keep ordering sandwiches? I just noticed, but everywhere we go, you order a sandwich. I don't think the carbohydrates are good for you."

Shiro gives her his best offended look. A few shreds of lettuce escape his open mouth, landing on the desk between them, a sad testament. Like the shreds of his once-dignity, Shiro thinks. Allura watches them fall, squinting at him.

Coran leans in from the hallway and informs him with dire certainty, "You're too old for a growth spurt," as he grabs at his own stomach. "At your age—well. It'll just stick."

He can't even muster the energy to be aghast.

His life is a haze of slow phone calls and slower meetings with clients and endless, endless legal writing. He's allowed to have joy. He's allowed to eat a sandwich gifted to him by the most beautiful man alive, especially if said man was himself dressed as a sandwich. Not quite a gift. Almost a gift. It was four dollars with the coupon and an additional twenty minutes out of his way, but it was still worth it.

Allura lets it drop. Shiro realizes later that was her lulling him into a false sense of security. She's sweet and a bit dorky and it's all covering a velociraptor-like ability to suss out nonsense.

That moment comes later. Much later.

She texts him at eight in the morning a few weeks into June and says she's in the neighborhood and can walk into work with him which should be suspicious and is, but not enough to argue with. Shiro doesn't see his fatal error for what it is until his feet automatically turn down the route he's gotten used to taking, and there he is. Keith, in all his glory. A sandwich among men.

He feels the moment Allura sees him because she tenses and then makes a soft sound like a sigh. Shiro tries to not make eye contact with Keith—but he can't help it. Muscle memory. "Hey," he hears himself say, with a dopey smile and a dopier wave. He sees Allura's mouth open out of the corner of his eye, and then she leans up and hisses in his ear with the venom she usually reserves for lying clients:

"A sandwich boy? A _sandwich boy?_ "

* * *

His order is a Reuben with caviar and salmon instead of regular ingredients like meat and meat because that's all the restaurant Allura chooses for lunch has on offer for sandwiches. It's a hollow comfort. Allura watches the waiter set it down with a look like she wants to reach across the table and throw it in Shiro's lap just to watch him scramble.

She lets it lie for the exact amount of time it takes Shiro to get a bite in his mouth and then hisses softly over her soup, for at least the sixth time, "A sandwich boy?"

Shiro tries not to choke.

"No," he corrects once he can make words. "He's a sandwich _man_. He's a mechanic. A really, really good mechanic. The—the other thing is part-time."

Allura's mouth opens delicately. She sets down the soup spoon with an air of finality. Darkness passes over Shiro's heart. "Is that why you've kept that hideous car?"

She's ruthless. Not a velociraptor—a T-rex of omnipotence. Shiro can't say yes, but he can't say no, either. Work is stressful, and who would begrudge him a glimpse of one perfect grease-smudged collarbone? No one.

No one but Allura.

"Oh," she mocks in an accented falsetto that doesn't sound like her and definitely doesn't sound like Shiro, "a mechanic _and_ he's dressed like a sandwich? I can't _not_ fuck him."

Shiro doesn't look at her, doesn't acknowledge her presence. He came to lunch alone.

"Shiro," she says, and louder, " _Shiro_." When he looks up, she's standing. "Don't come back until you've done something about this." He tries not to let the fear show in his eyes, but fails spectacularly. Her gaze softens by two percent—it's probably his imagination—and then she says in what's probably supposed to be an encouraging voice, "What's the worst that can happen?"

She sets two twenties on the table and leaves him there. The entire restaurant is—not staring at him, but in his vicinity, like they can't quite bear to look at him. The sandwich in his hands feels like a brand of shame. He sets it down with care.

It's not the sandwich he wanted, anyway.

* * *

The worst that can happen is probably not worse than lusting after a man in sandwich costume for months. That's what he thinks when he gets in his car, and then he starts it, and—it gets worse. The car makes a sound like dying whale or an angry prophet and then it starts spewing smoke. It's not black—there's a yellowish hue to it that can't be healthy. Shiro sits back and watches while a mother walking by on the sidewalk hurries her children past.

And even as he watches, a little giddy something leaps through his chest. He's addicted to getting his car fixed; this is what Shiro has become.

He can't ask Allura for a ride. The tow service drops him off at the garage and Kolivan meets him out front with a look on his face Shiro can't interpret. It activates his fight or flight instinct on sight.

"It's smoking," Shiro says, backing up against the tow vehicle a step. "The entire thing." He waves a hand at the car. All it's slick lines, it's fine pedigree, it's noble visage... It's a lie.

Kolivan sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and shakes his head. It feels like a personal judgment. Shiro opens his mouth say more and Kolivan puts up a hand. "We'll do what we can. I won't say no to your money, but you should consider—"

"Getting a new car. I know." All he needs is for the ghost of his grandfather to appear in the sky above him and shake his head in disappointment for his shame to be complete.

"No—but that, too."

Shiro frowns at him, trying to connect the dots. He was a good student. He's smart. He's—a nerd, Allura says, but so is she. Still, he can't make sense of it. Kolivan sees his confusion, shakes his head again, raising his eyes somewhere above Shiro's head like maybe Shiro's grandfather really has appeared there to judge him unworthy.

"You're emotionally compromised," Kolivan says with the careful wording of a man who would like to be having any other conversation anywhere else on Earth.

If Shiro could back up further, he would, but he's already trying to affect a nonchalant lean against the tow truck. He cocks his head a little to complete the look. Kolivan meets it with something identical and worse. It says, _The last time you were here you choked on your own drool and had a coughing fit in the waiting room and I saw everything._

Shiro looks down, looks to the side, but Kolivan's gaze holds him there with something aggressively unimpressed. Yeah. In the arc of his personal history, it's been an embarrassing few months. He really doesn't have much left to lose.

Kolivan looks away, finally. "He probably won't kill you if you try to talk to him."

For a moment, Shiro thinks he's misheard, but then the words hit. Probably. He probably won't die. Keith probably won't try to kill him. It's as close to encouragement as Shiro's going to get, but then he realizes something beautiful and horrific. Even if Keith does try to kill him...

He envisions Keith's face in anger and he realizes: it'll be worth it.

* * *

The next day dawns bright and clear and—hot. He goes to the sandwich shop first because halfway there his suit starts sticking to him and no sane man would be out in that weather dressed like—like _that._ But when he gets there, Keith is nowhere to be found.

The man behind the counter sighs and ducks his head, beckoning Shiro in. "You know, we were only gonna keep him on for a couple weeks, but—"

"Thirst has no curfew," the boy next to him mutters, slapping lettuce on the sandwich with a vengeance. He looks like Keith's existence is a personal insult. "At least it's his last day. We don't have to deal with anyone else asking for his number."

Shiro can't decide if he should be offended or jealous. The other man rolls his eyes a little. "He brings in good business. He's off in a half hour though. You better go fast if you want to catch him."

He tears out of the shop. In retrospect, he knows where Keith works and could have contacted him of his own volition at any time. In retrospect, a lot of mistakes are made. In the aftermath, he runs over them in his head. A casual meeting at the garage would have been preferable. Waiting for Keith to get off work and kicking up some small talk. Or trying to have that conversation literally any other time and place than on a public street corner while they're both sweating and one of them is a sandwich.

Any way you slice it, it's a disaster.

By the time he gets there, it's past quitting time for Keith and Shiro is the hottest he's ever been. No one should be outside in it and he doesn't expect Keith to be there at all, but when he rounds the corner, there he stands. The shadow he casts is noble, almost. It's probably the heat, but the sun and sweat and Shiro's eyes make him shimmer and glow when he shuffle-turns to Shiro.

He's glistening and Shiro is gone on him.

"You're still here."

Keith looks cagey, like maybe this whole time Shiro has been a very dedicated debt collector waiting for his moment. "Yeah?" His voice is rough from the heat, his face red. It gives Shiro courage. He really doesn't have anything to lose. Man and sandwich. They're equals here.

"The shop told me you'd quit. It's so hot, I didn't think you'd be out here, so I went there..." Shiro realizes he's rambling, and then that he's just admitted to hunting Keith down through the city on the hottest day of the year despite them having one conversation, at most. To call it a conversation at all is generous.

Keith does something with his arms that makes the whole sandwich list dangerously to one side. "It's not that hot."

It is. Shiro realizes he's stepped closer without meaning to, and now he can see that Keith's face is an advanced shade of red that can't be healthy. There's sweat sticking his hair to his head. Several people walking by are eyeing him with real concern. "It is. It's a hundred and three. Keith, what are you doing out here?"

Keith shuffles side to side. He's still listing; he's starting to resemble a sinking ship—a sandwich, thrown in a pool at a child's birthday party, floating for one perfect moment before it begins to fall. Shiro puts up his hands, trying to steady him from afar.

"I quit," Keith says, and closes his eyes. Shiro takes another step forward. He looks like he's seconds from passing out. "I have to tell you something, but you have a girlfriend, and I'm a sandwich, and—"

Shiro's blushing. He's a grown man with a six-figure career and he's standing in the street blushing at a sandwich. No—at a man. People have started to pause, watching this. Shiro recognizes it only at the periphery. His shame and dignity are long departed, and Keith thinks he has a girlfriend. Keith _cares._

"I don't have a girlfriend," Shiro hears himself say, in a trance. "And you're not a sandwich. You're a mechanic at Kolivan's, right?" Might as well come out with it all.

Keith nods.

"I knew it," Shiro says. God, does he know it. "I—I used to take my car there." Ok, maybe he doesn't need to come out with all of it at once. Keith will hate him for the car alone. They don't really need to add that complication right now.

Keith wipes at his forehead and then stares at the sweat in his hand for a second. This close, Shiro can see his eyes are unfocused. "I like you," Keith says.

He makes it sound like an apology, but it's the sweetest thing Shiro has ever heard.

Shiro's blush deepens—it's the heat, mostly. "But you never talk to me. You—you gave me a flyer when I introduced myself." He swallows and searches the depths of his soul for one last crumb of courage, and says, "I was going to ask you out, if you want to sometime." He scratches the back of his neck, trying to be casual, but Keith's lips part softly.

Even sweat soaked and couched in the delicate trappings of a sub, he's lovely. Keith's eyes flutter shut. There's sweat in his eyelashes. It occurs to Shiro again that this is a conversation they could have anywhere else than on a busy street corner in the burning sun. Keith's literally roasting before his eyes.

 _Panini_ , he thinks to himself, in shame.

Keith starts to topple a little, eyes still closed. "Keith?" They open a crack. It's probably the weight of the foam that's holding him up, like ballast. Shiro needs to do something. "Can I—get you some water?" Brilliant, but when he glances around there are only concerned strangers and not a vending machine in sight.

He puts a hand to Keith's forehead, as if he needs to check his temperature, but it seems like the right thing to do.

Keith mumbles something to himself and raises his own hand to Shiro's face, but it's unclear what he's trying to do—it's a lopsided slap more than anything. He drags his fingers across Shiro's everything, and Shiro is too stunned to move away or speak. "Your eyebrows," Keith slurs, louder. "I want to touch them." His hand slides down. One of his fingers ends up in Shiro's mouth before his hand falls away and his eyes close.

"Keith? You—what? Keith?"

Keith goes down hard. Shiro tries to catch him, but the best he manages is a vague, downward grapple. There's a low gasp from the growing crowd of people that have given up all sense of common decency and are actively watching their tragedy play out.

But Shiro can handle this. In high school they did an assembly on emergency first aid. "I'm trained in CPR," he tells the crowd, an excuse more than anything. This is his sandwich to save, and if he can't do that, he doesn't deserve Keith. Shiro checks his pulse because that seems like a good place to start. He can't tell much beyond the fact that it's there, but it's a good sign.

"You should get him out of that thing probably," a man by Shiro's shoulder says.

Right. Of course. Shiro's mind tries to wrap around the how of it, but he's hot and he's worried and for some reason the first place his brain goes is to ask, "Does anyone have a knife?"

Silence from the crowd, and a few pitying looks.

No. No knife. There comes a point in a man's life when he has to prove himself. This, Shiro is certain, is his moment. This is destiny, or the closest he's ever going to get to it. _If you love him, you'll tear him free from that prison of bread._ The voice comes to him from some distant place. He can do it. He will do it. He pulls off his jacket, and then his tie and rolls up his sleeves.

"There's a zipper on the back," someone says. Shiro hears them, absorbs the information, and discards it.

Instead, he grips the bun in both hands and _rips_. A woman screams, and someone gasps, but once he's started there's no stopping. Years of wear and tear have made the sandwich costume no more than an elaborate, barely cohesive system of paint and bad stitching. There are some staples in the tomato and what appears to be a bit of hot glue gun hemming on the cheese. Shiro tears through it all. By the time he gets down to bare Keith, they're in a nest of sandwich shreds—and then he sees Keith's shirt.

He sees Keith's shirt, and the lizard brain that's now in control of him goes, _that too,_ and away it goes.

Underneath it, Keith is pale, splotched with red, and the most incredible thing Shiro has ever seen. He doesn't realize he's gathered Keith in his arms and leaned in until someone clears their throat. The crowd of people have moved back a few feet to accommodate his brief departure from sanity and ex-sandwich confetti.

"Sandwich boy... " someone says, a bare lamentation.

 _Sandwich man_ , Shiro wants to tell them. The body in his arms is the body of a man. A muscled, beautiful man, and no one who thinks otherwise deserves to look upon him. "Keith?" Shiro pats his face. Someone shoves a cold bottle of water in Keith's face and Shiro grabs it away. "I've got him," he tries not to snap. He uncaps it, holding it to Keith's lips. "Here—"

Keith jerks awake. Shiro tuts at him and lets him drink, feeling more relieved and affectionate than he really has a right to. He lets his fingers thread deeper into Keith's hair, using the grip to keep him from choking himself on water. "Slow. Just take it easy."

"Should we call an ambulance?"

Shiro shoots a general glare in the direction of whoever suggested it and hugs Keith closer. As if Shiro doesn't have this handled.

"What… the fuck…" Keith blinks looking around. His eyes are still out of focus, but he's noticed the murder scene around him. It hadn't really occurred to Shiro that he might have some affection for the costume. Or—god, what if the shop wants Keith to pay for it? Shiro's already writing the check in his head.

"Sorry, sorry. I couldn't find the zipper." It's not an excuse. The man that's been hovering right by Shiro's shoulder since the start clicks his tongue in a universal gesture of judgment.

Keith's eyes roll to his bare limbs. He hasn't made any effort to lift them or move out of Shiro's hold. "My shirt?"

The man clicks his tongue again, twice. Instead of answering, Shiro shoves the bottle at Keith's mouth and tries not to look guilty. He'll pay for the shirt, too, he thinks as he traces his fingers over Keith's brow. He doesn't feel as hot. The crowd is providing an odd sort of shade effect, but Shiro is starting to feel the weight of their gaze and his own embarrassment. "Can you stand? I want to get you out of the sun."

He ends up mostly carrying Keith to the shade of the nearby tree. "What happened?" Keith asks.

 _I asked you out. You passed out. I ripped your clothes off._ Something about the sequence of events doesn't quite add up the image Shiro is suddenly dedicated to presenting, so what comes out of his mouth is: "You asked me out and fainted."

"I asked you out?" Keith blinks up at him, looking confused and maybe a little skeptical.

Shiro clears his throat. Maybe not precisely. Maybe not at all. "Close enough." He pushes the hair off Keith's forehead to distract them both. Keith leans into the touch.

"Did you say yes?" he asks.

Shiro has to hide his face because his smile is close to childish. "Of course I did." When he looks back up, Keith is looking at him like he's lost his mind.

"Why?"

Somehow admitting to months of lust and ill-fated car repairs and more lust and the dire realization that his affection for Keith transcended the bounds of a sandwich costume is a little too much to own up to at once. It all hits Shiro in that moment. Keith's eyes are big and blue and they haven't talked enough for it to be more than a crush, but somehow it is.

"Because I like you," Shiro sums up, and kisses him.

It's perfect. Keith leans into it a little, sweetly.

When they pull apart, Keith raises a hand to his lips. He's red, and it's not just the heat—he's blushing in earnest. "But why?"

"Keith..." If Keith needs Shiro to describe to him in many and embarrassing ways the reasons, Shiro can do that, but once more, his Cool Brain fails him and leaves the field wide open for the worst of him. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best.

He's laughing before he can get the words out.


End file.
